By Bryan D. Palmer
2007 University of Illinois Press
Reviewed by Steve Halpern
This past summer, there were large demonstrations around the world protesting murders by police officers of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others. Clearly, police officers have murdered literally thousands of people before this year. Clearly, institutionalized racist discrimination has been a routine aspect of the history of this country throughout its history. However, this summer those murders by the police became intolerable for people all over the world.
Some will argue that those demonstrations were just a way of letting off steam during the pandemic. Some will argue that people were enraged by the openly racist comments of President Donald Trump. Well, in my opinion, today there is a new generation that is developing their own perspective of dealing with a world where they see profound problems in the future.
Many young people attended universities and now have astronomical debts. Many have seen their jobs eliminated and now have no way of paying their rent. Today, people are becoming aware of the fact that there are fifty million people in this country who don’t have enough food to eat, while this country has the potential to feed the world. Then, there are the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives unnecessarily because of decisions by the government not to advance a course that could have saved many lives.
Thinking about this reality, many are beginning to see that the idea of a socialist world might be the way to deal with the persistent problems we face. So, if the idea of socialism has the potential to begin to resolve our problems, then we need to study the history of this movement in the United States.
There are many books about the history of the communist movement in this country. In my opinion, there is one name that ties this history together better than any other. His name is James P. Cannon. Bryan D. Palmer is a professor at Trinity College in Canada, and he has written an incisive and informed biography of Cannon. This volume is only the first of three proposed volumes about Cannon’s life story. Reading this book gives us a glimmer into aspects of the history of this country that few people who call themselves historians are interested in.
Rosedale, Kansas
James Patrick Cannon was born in 1890 in Rosedale, Kansas. His parents were immigrants from Ireland, who were well aware of the Irish Potato Famine that cost the lives of about one million people on the island. After looking for work in several cities, Jim Cannon’s parents settled in Rosedale, that was a neighborhood in Kansas City.
The shack young Jim Cannon shared with his brothers and sisters had no direct access to running water or electricity. His mother needed to carry water from a central location every day. At that time, Rosedale was in a relatively rural area where young people could roam in open fields and the forest in their free time.
When young Jim Cannon was about twelve-years old, he assisted his father working in a lumber yard. In those days, children routinely worked in industrial environments that were dangerous. An accident caused young Jim to injure his thumb. Because the employer chose not to transport young Jim to a hospital where he could be properly cared for, Jim Cannon lost part of his thumb.
We might think about the fact that in 1903 Mother Jones organized a 125-mile March of the Children that protested child labor in Philadelphia. The labor leader Eugene Debs mentioned efforts like Mother Jones’ March of the Children in his speech protesting the U.S. participation in the First World War. Debs highlighted the hypocrisy of President Woodrow Wilson’s claim that the war was a “war for democracy.” Today there is a historical marker commemorating Mother Jones March of the Children on the north side of City Hall in Philadelphia.
Jim Cannon didn’t go to high school until the age of seventeen. Before that time, there was no high school for him to attend in Rosedale. During those years young Jim worked at various industrial jobs attempting to make a living. He also gravitated to a neighborhood pool hall where he could relax and hang out with his friends.
Young Jim’s friends teased him for going to school with students who were twelve and thirteen years old. Defending himself for wanting an education was one of his first battles. In his later life James Cannon said that making the decision to go to high school and defending that decision was a turning point in his life.
Eventually, young Jim became interested in literature, and this interest flourished in his two years of high school. Another reason high school became one of many turning points in young Jim’s life was because he became fascinated with radical politics. Jim’s father was an ardent supporter of Eugene Debs, who was one of the most articulate supporters of the interests of working people in the history of this country. While he was in high school, young Jim Cannon joined Debs Socialist Party.
Jim married one of his teachers, Lista Makimson, who was six years his senior. He fathered two children with her, and his high school education enabled him to get a low-level clerical job. However, a union federation known as the Industrial Workers of the World was in the midst of organizing, and young Jim Cannon began to travel all over the country working to build the I.W.W.
In those days, young Jim Cannon became what was known as a hobo. Hobos travelled the country looking for work, jumping on trains for free rides, trying to avoid conductors who would throw them off. This was one of the ways Cannon and others worked to travel the country to build the International Workers of the World.
At that time, the American Federation of Labor was the dominant union organization. However, the A.F.L. restricted itself to organizing craft workers, and that strategy limited the effectiveness of the union movement. The I.W.W. filled in this void, but the combined efforts of the government as well as corporate power proved to be persistent obstacles for workers who wanted to escape horrendous conditions on the job and miserable wages. Jim Cannon never forgot how receptive workers all over the country were to the message that we have the potential to organize and transform our lives.
However, while the I.W.W. had some success in organizing workers, they were unable to overcome many of the challenges they faced. When members of the I.W.W. were arrested on various charges many refused to defend themselves because they didn’t want to plead their case in a court that effectively supported the interests of employers. Many I.W.W. members served longer prison sentences because they refused to defend themselves in court.
For these and other reasons, Jim Cannon was one of the members of the I.W.W. who started an organization called the Workers Party that eventually became the Communist Party.
The Russian Revolution and the Palmer Raids
The Russian Revolution was a watershed moment in the history of the human race. While workers in this country went on numerous strikes against employers, the working class in Czarist Russia established their own government and named it the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. While workers around the world were inspired by this development, capitalist governments became obsessed with limiting the influence of the Russian Revolution.
So, James Cannon was one of many revolutionaries from the United States who visited the Soviet Union to see for himself what a nation with a worker’s government would look like. There he met the African American poet Claud McKay. He also met many of the leaders of the Russian Revolution. Initially Cannon became familiar with Grigory Zinoviev, who headed up international work for the Bolsheviks.
The United States government was one of fourteen nations that invaded the Soviet Union in an attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government. After a war that lasted two-and-one-half years, the Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, defeated the invaders.
By 1919 the U.S. government, under the direction of A. Mitchell Palmer, started arresting immigrants in this country who might have supported the Russian Revolution. In all, about 10,000 people might have been arrested in the Palmer Raids, and the government deported hundreds of those arrested.
In 1920, the federal government arrested Jim Cannon for supporting a miner’s strike. This absurd charge had to do with the idea that the miner’s strike compromised the war effort. The facts were that this strike took place after the First World War was over. Yet the government demanded the astronomical sum of $30,000 for Cannon’s bail.
At that time, the workers movement was largely comprised of immigrants who recently came here from other countries. Among those, there were Jewish workers who recognized that Cannon had unique abilities that would benefit the labor movement. This group raised Cannon’s bail money. After about two years, the government dropped their absurd charges against Cannon.
The Palmer Raids, as well as the systematic repression by the government had an effect on the labor movement. For a while, activists felt they could only operate as an underground movement. The argument was that if workers attempted to organize openly, this would setup activists for arrest, incarceration, and even murder.
Jim Cannon argued against this perspective and believed it was possible to organize openly. He made his case while participating in an international workers conference in the Soviet Union. The leadership of the Soviet government had experienced severe repression under the regime of the Czar. However, they also understood the need to advance the interests of workers openly, and supported Cannon’s perspective.
Within the Workers Party, Cannon organized the International Labor Defense. This organization worked to defend political prisoners all over the world, but concentrated on the political prisoners in this country. The ILD had its own newspaper that had about 22,000 subscribers.
The most prominent case that the ILD supported was the defense of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. This was a clear frame-up and the government executed Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. While Cannon was enraged by this execution, he argued that the defense committee prevented the execution from happening quietly. The names of Sacco and Vanzetti became known all over the world as clear examples of the horrendous injustice of the United States government.
However, for most of his years in the Workers and then Communist Party, Cannon argued against those who attempted to use that organization for their personal gain. For a while, Cannon succeeded in being a part of the majority faction of the party. However, when Joseph Stalin began to betray the core values of the Russian Revolution, Cannon’s idea of advancing a genuinely proletarian party became increasingly impossible.
At this point, there is a question that needs to be asked. In 1928, Cannon had a salary on the staff of the Communist Party. He had been doing effective work in the International Labor Defense. So, why would he advance a perspective in support of the politics of Leon Trotsky, knowing that position would mean his expulsion from the Communist Party? This would also mean that Cannon and a few other individuals would need to start a new workers political party from scratch.
When we look at the early life of Cannon, we can also begin to see the answer to that question. From an early age, Cannon not only believed that the horrendous conditions workers experienced needed to be improved, he also believed that workers have the potential to create an organization that can transform the world. His work in support of Eugene Debs, the International Workers of the World, and the Communist Party gave him that confidence. What set Cannon apart from many others was his understanding and determination to organize a proletarian political party capable of advancing the interests of the working class.
So, in 1928, while Cannon attended an international workers meeting in the Soviet Union, he accidentally came across a document written by Leon Trotsky. At that time, Joseph Stalin was working to transform the Bolshevik Party into a cult that supported him. While Trotsky had been a central leader of the party, as well as the central military commander of the Red Army, Stalin first had him exiled to Siberia, then he was exiled out of the Soviet Union, then in 1940 a supporter of Stalin assassinated Trotsky in Mexico.
Reading that document written by Trotsky was a turning point in the life of James Cannon. He began to realize that he had a choice. If he continued to be a leader of the Communist Party, he would no longer be advancing a revolutionary organization. Cannon began to become aware that his continued participation in the Communist Party would make him nothing more than a bureaucrat. Cannon’s life story would not allow him to live that kind of life.
So, first Cannon needed to smuggle Trotsky’s document out of the Soviet Union. Then, he spoke with two other co-thinkers about declaring their support of the political orientation of Leon Trotsky. That act prompted a trial withing the Communist Party where Cannon and his co-thinkers were expelled. One of those who the Communist Party expelled was Rose Karsner, who was Cannon’s wife and co-thinker. Karsner became one of the founding members of the organization that became the Socialist Workers Party.
At that time the leader of the Communist Party in this country was Jay Lovestone. The Communist Party eventually expelled Lovestone from its ranks.
After Cannon’s expulsion from the C.P., other leading members of the party were also expelled. One of the cities where Cannon gained support was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cannon’s supporters in that city would eventually become the leaders of a teamster’s union strike in 1934. That strike would be one of three strikes that would advance a movement that recruited millions of workers into unions.
Just as Eugene Debs gave a speech in opposition to U.S. participation in the First World War, supporters of the Socialist Workers Party opposed sending soldiers to battle in the Second World War. The teamsters of Minneapolis waged a persistent battle against the capitalists of that city for about one year. Leaders of that strike argued that workers in this country would gain nothing by murdering workers who lived in Europe.
Because the Socialist Workers Party exercised their First Amendment rights of free speech, the government arrested eighteen members of the SWP. Many of those arrested, including James Cannon, would serve sixteen months in prison. The government would later acknowledge that there was no legal basis for arresting the SWP members for exercising their First Amendment Rights.
The Socialist Workers Party then became active in defending the Cuban Revolution, supporting and publicizing the ideas of Malcolm X, and becoming leaders of the movement against the war in Vietnam. This was all made possible because James Cannon decided to support a political perspective advanced by Leon Trotsky. Cannon also carried out the seemingly impossible task of organizing a new political party with its newspaper The Militant.
During the war against Korea, Cannon sent a letter to President Truman protesting that war. We might think about how this son of Rosedale, Kansas grew up to express his solidarity with the people of Korea who fought against the invasion of their country by the armed forces of the United States.
Today, for those who are in the streets protesting against police brutality, the destruction of the environment, and the indifference of employers in establishing safe working environments, I believe that understanding the life story of James P. Cannon holds important lessons. One is how Cannon stood up, for his entire life, under seemingly impossible circumstances, to advance the interests of the working class.
We can also learn about the life of Farrell Dobbs, who was the Socialist Workers Party leader who was the central leader of the teamster’s strike in Minneapolis. All these efforts were made possible because of Leon Trotsky’s defiance of Joseph Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution.
One of the lessons we can learn from Cannon was his statement that in a healthy revolutionary party, there will be disagreements. When there are no disagreements, Cannon believe that this is a sign that the party is stagnating. So, when we hear people who are engaged in struggle say things we don’t agree with, that is not necessarily a bad thing. What is important is to establish an environment where there can be civil discussions about how to advance a political movement that can transform the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment